By Roberta Silman

Shannon Bowring is a wonderfully wise and compassionate writer, exquisitely alert to the varieties of human experience that exist at the end of the 20th century.

The Road to Dalton by Shannon Bowring. Europa Editions, 236 pages, $18.

Where the Forest Meets the River by Shannon Bowring. Europa Editions, 331 pages, $18.

Many people have said that a lot of fiction — both historical and contemporary — is based on two premises: a stranger arrives in town and his/her arrival sets a story going; or, a young person leaves town to set out on a journey. Those narratives are often character and plot driven. Yet, there are also superb novels in which the place is the focus and the characters move within it for the simple reason that life is so interesting that they have no reason to move. Shannon Bowring has created such a place, a fictional town named Dalton in the Aroostook section of Maine. Her first novel, The Road to Dalton, was her debut published in 2023; her second Dalton book, Where the Forest Meets the River, has just come out. Since I didn’t even know about the first book until I was sent the second, this review will cover the two volumes.

A lot of American writers, including me, have so fully absorbed Thornton Wilder’s great play Our Town that we don’t even know how deeply ingrained it has become. And that is fine — that is how great works of art are supposed to sink in. So when I felt Wilder’s influence as I read these novels I could feel myself relaxing; I had entered the world of Dalton as easily as I have immersed myself in the work of Sherwood Anderson and Willa Cather and Kent Haruf, as well as Richard Russo and Anne Tyler. To be fair, Bowring is more like Russo and Tyler — she has a way to go to reach the greatness of the three mentioned above — but she is wonderfully wise and compassionate. And exquisitely alert to the varieties of human experience that exist at the end of the 20th century. Thus, she has created a group of flawed but enormously appealing characters.

Located in the shadow of Maine’s highest mountain Mt. Katahdin, Dalton could pass for any small town in rural America in 1989 when this story begins. And, like most of those towns, it is filled with recognizable people, like the richest couple, Marshall Frazier and his self-absorbed wife Annette, who own the lumber mill and seem to regard their four children more as trophies than people; or Rose, who became pregnant when she was sixteen and struggles as a single mother to support and bring up her two sons; or Rose’s sometime partner, the abusive and frustrated Tommy, who desires more than a mechanic’s salary and begins to deal drugs; or the upright and virtuous policeman Nate, who saved a girl from drowning and married his childhood sweetheart, Bridget, and is baffled that the birth of a baby can create problems that he never imagined.

And then there are the others who may look like their forebears but are leading very different lives: Trudy and Bev who love each other more than their husbands; their husbands, Richard, the town’s family physician, and Bill, a long haul trucker, who both know what is going on but seem unable to change anything in their disappointing marriages; and the highly intelligent Greg who has no idea what his sexual identity may be as he navigates through high school as the fat boy bullied by his peers. He is the outlier — perhaps the most interesting character in these novels — who finds solace in Trudy’s garden and dreams of escaping the town.

Author Shannon Bowring — these two novels will nourish you, and touch your soul and give you strength and solace. Photo: courtesy of the author

The Road to Dalton begins in the winter, when a fender bender sends Bridget into labor a month early and Sophie Caroline Theroux, the granddaughter of the Fraziers and Bev and Bill Theroux, is born. The annual Christmas party at the Fraziers also becomes a celebration of Sophie’s birth, a birth that will change everything in all these people’s lives. After this happy start, things grow more complicated. With precise prose and a meticulous eye for detail, Bowring reveals the texture of life in Dalton; we are drawn into these people’s lives, we see their strengths and flaws, we become privy to their secrets and dreams. We see the grubby trailer Rose has to make a home, we see Annette’s selfishness, Marshall’s preoccupation with the business, Nate’s pride in his police work, Trudy’s beautiful garden. But, while we are blithely reading along, assuming that this is just another delicious novel about small-town life, Bowring is also letting us in on the biggest secret of all: Bridget is struggling with severe postpartum depression that she is determined to hide, seizing on moments that can keep her going. Like this one:

There have been moments when the crying stops and the weight of the baby in her arms is warm and light instead of an anvil pushing her into the cold, wet ground. Moments when Bridget looks down and sees her — Sophie, their child, the one she and Nate created. . . . In these moments love doesn’t exactly rush in—it’s more a gentle swell, a river slowly, slowly rising as rain weeps down from dim gray sky. But it’s enough to make Bridget think that maybe she can do this. Maybe she can be a mother to this impossible creature. Maybe she can feel all the love she’s supposed to feel toward her daughter.

As we witness Bridget’s increasingly harrowing situation, we become complicit in the story because we know more about Bridget than the characters around her do. Because, although they love to gossip about each other, the people here all seem to live by that fiercely American motto so prevalent in towns like Dalton: Mind your own business. So when Bridget slashes her wrists in the bathtub about halfway through the novel, when she becomes a statistical death by suicide, when her shattered young husband is widowed and Sophie loses her mother, everything changes. Because suicide — probably more than any other event in the life of a town — triggers a collective guilt that, in turn, leads to finger pointing and fear and exhaustion and rage.

Bowring has a firm grasp of this difficult material and I am in awe of her ability to take it on in her first novel. What is so impressive is that we don’t feel manipulated by Bridget’s suicide because Bowring has set the stage quietly and skillfully so that, when it comes, this devastating turn seems inevitable. She also understands that even the most terrible of tragedies does not absolve those involved from the necessary, daily business of living. Bowring knows in her very bones that the aftermath of a tragedy can bring light and joy as well as darkness and despair.

The rest of the first novel explores the anger and fury and sadness that ensues in Dalton until Sophie’s first birthday. And the sequel, When the Forest Meets the River, starts five years later, when Sophie is a real person and people have either begun to recover, like Bev and Trudy, or have sunk into even greater despair, like Annette. Because life goes on, other events happen, people get sick, Greg goes off to college and loses weight, Richard and Bill gain courage and begin to face their wives in a new way, the coping mechanisms that seemed to make sense after Bridget’s suicide become too static, and more change occurs. Vera Curtis returns to help her parents and ends up becoming a major player in Richard’s practice; Rose’s boys and Sophie begin to play more important roles in their family’s lives, while those who were supposed to be good solid citizens decide to run.

Bowring also utilizes the more leisurely pace of this second book to explore more of her characters’ back stories, We are given a fuller idea of why Bridget couldn’t cope, of why she needed Nate at such a young age, and we also learn about how love can expand and grow and heal. How collective guilt can not only hurt but also help, given time. How support and a degree of tenderness from unlikely places can give people who are broken the courage not only to go on, but also to see things more clearly and follow their dreams. Here are Vera and Nate and Sophie having something to eat after Vera has made the decision to come back to Dalton for good:

. . . Vera feels hungrier than she has in weeks. Maybe years. Nate hands her back four dollars in change.

They eat in the car, between the loading dock and the Laundromat. Grease gets under Vera’s fingernails. Mayo shines on Sophie’s lips. Juice drips from the tomatoes onto the pale upholstery of the passenger seat, and Vera tells Nate not to worry about it. It doesn’t matter. All that matters is eating every bite of this perfect meal, savoring it the way it deserves to be savored. Slowly, with reverence. 

Many years ago, when I was in my early ‘20s I remember standing in the Guggenheim Museum before two drawings by Kandinsky. I have no recollection of the drawings themselves, but their titles have stayed with me all these years. They were called “Delicate Joy” and “Small Pleasures.” These books by Shannon Bowring are filled with just that and, as the long winter approaches, take heart. Here are two books that will nourish you, and touch your soul and give you strength and solace.

Exactly what good fiction is supposed to do.

Roberta Silman is the author of five novels, a short story collection, and two children’s books. A second collection of stories, called Heart-work, will come out as a paperback and ebook later this fall. Her most recent novels, Secrets and Shadows and Summer Lightning, are available on Amazon in paperback and ebook and as audio books from Alison Larkin Presents. Secrets and Shadows (Arts Fuse review) is in its second printing and was chosen as one of the best Indie Books of 2018 by Kirkus. A recipient of Fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts, she has reviewed for the New York Times and Boston Globe, and writes regularly for the Arts Fuse. More about her can be found at robertasilman.com, and she can also be reached at rsilman@verizon.net.